Armchair Commentary's Amazon Blog

Here's a quick promotional reel touting some of the specialty features appearing on the Blu-ray discs Watchmen, 300: The Complete Experience, and The Dark Knight (you may have seen that one already), including Maximum Movie Mode, BD-Live, and more. Watch it below or here.  --David

Excited about Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince, opening on July 15? Relive some of your favorite moments from the first five movies by watching the retrospective below or in our Harry Potter store. --David

You don't need Michael Bay style pyrotechnics to appreciate the glories of Transformers. In fact, you don't even need money. Amazon Video On Demand has the first two episodes of the '80s animated classic available free for a limited time (as well as the rest of the influential first season). You know the story, right?  "Many millions years ago, on the planet Cybertron, life existed. But not life as we know it today." That life consisted of brutal Decepticons and peaceable Autobots, all of whom can turn into other things and ... well, suffice it to say that these robots find their way to modern-day Earth, and there are cool vehicles, numerous battles and (intentionally?) hilarious exclamations like "hold on to your crankshaft!" You can find the just-released 25th-anniversary edition season one DVD here, and free episodes here(watch instantly on your computer or TV). -- Stephanie Reid-Simons, Amazon Video On Demand (Twitter: amazonvideo and Facebook: Amazon Video On Demand)

By coincidence, today, Independence Day, I'm midway through HBO's John Adams. But I'm unable to watch scenes of the Congressional Congress without expecting them to break into song. That's because my introduction to the signing of the Declaration of Independence was watching 1776 as a kid many years ago, and back in the days of limited network channels somehow this movie and The Music Man would always be broadcast on July 4.  (Where is either movie on Blu-ray, or 1776's soundtrack CD?) 1776 can feel like a history lesson at times, but I like it a lot: it's funny, William Daniels gives a tour-de-force performance as John Adams, and as an American I find it quite moving. Watch a clip of the opening number below or on YouTube. Happy Fourth of July! --David

British actress Mollie Sugden, who played "Mrs. Slocombe" in the classic sitcom Are You Being Served, passed away on Wednesday at the age of 86. Her blue-haired character was one of the cornerstones of the Grace Brothers department store alongside John Inman's "Mr. Humphries."  Watch a clip from the show below or on YouTube, or you can read the Telegraph story. --David

One of the cool things about the Sin City Blu-ray disc is a feature they call Cine-Explore, which plays the theatrical cut accompanied by the Robert Rodriguez-Frank Miller commentary track and drops in picture-in-picture panels of either the original graphic novel, the green-screen shots before the special effects were added, or both. When the director is trying to re-create something on the page, this is a really interesting comparison. Looks like Watchmen is going to do something similar on Blu-ray, called Maximum Movie Mode. Watch the preview below or in our Watchmen store, where you can also learn about our Digital Bundle: pre-order the Blu-ray or two-disc DVD and watch the movie instantly on release day through Amazon Video On Demand. --David

Actor Harve Presnell died at the age of 75 yesterday, June 30, in California. Presnell was best known for starring on the Broadway stage in The Unsinkable Molly Brown opposite Tammy Grimes, then taking the same role in the 1964 film with Debbie Reynolds in the lead. Presnell also sang "They Call the Wind Maria" in the film version of Paint Your Wagon (and is often called the best thing about that movie). Presnell made a late-career resurgence with roles in Fargo (as William H. Macy's father-in-law), Saving Private Ryan, and other movies, and numerous appearances on television. Read the AP story --David

Oscar-winning actor Karl Malden died today, July 1, of natural causes at the age of 97. Born Mladen Sekulovich on March 22, 1912, the bulb-nose character actor was a star of both stage and screen. Raised in Gary, Indiana, Malden briefly attended a teacher's college, then enrolled in Chicago's Goodman Theatre Dramatic School. Following World War II-era service in the Army Air Force, Malden's career took off with the role of Mitch in the 1947 Broadway production of A Streetcar Named Desire, opposite Marlon Brando.

Malden won the Academy Award for best supporting actor in the 1951 film of Streetcar, and he was nominated again for On the Waterfront (also with Brando) in 1954. He later starred alongside Michael Douglas in the television series The Streets of San Francisco, and won an Emmy for the TV movie Fatal Vision. Well-known as a spokesman for American Express Travelers Cheques, Malden also served as president of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences from 1989 to 1993. Malden had been married to Mona Greenberg since 1938. --Tom Keogh

Editor's Note: Henry Selick is the director of several acclaimed films including The Nightmare Before Christmas, James and the Giant Peach, and most recently, Coraline. (He also created visual effects for The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou.) Below, he shares a behind-the-scenes look at how the movie Coraline came to be. --Leah

Intro   
So the Coraline DVD is coming out on July 21st, in three different flavors--plain vanilla, with sprinkles, and dipped in blu-ray--and I was invited to do this “guest blog” for Amazon. It’s a one-shot deal, no updates or follow-ups, and my orders are to tell the home-viewing audience something they don’t already know. I figure if I say enough, there’s bound to be something you haven’t already learned on the internet or in the ads or from seeing the film at the movie theaters. Here goes:

Firsts

• Coraline is the first animated feature from LAIKA in Portland, Oregon. It rains a lot in Oregon and it rains a lot in Coraline. This is not a coincidence.

• Coraline is the first stop-motion feature to be conceived and shot in stereoscopic 3D.

• Coraline is the first feature film I wrote the screenplay for, adapting Neil Gaiman’s exquisite novel.

• Coraline is the first all stop-motion feature that I’ve directed since The Nightmare Before Christmas.

Time

Great stop-motion animation takes an insane amount of time to create--the puppets in Coraline were reposed and photographed between 12 and 24 times per second of film. So in one day, an animator can produce just a few seconds of finished footage; in a week, a team of 17 animators can produce a minute; in a year, an even larger team produces a little over an hour.

Nothing came quickly on Coraline. Neil Gaiman first gave me the pages of his yet-to-be published novel back in late 2000. I loved it right away and took it to producer Bill Mechanic, convincing both Neil and Bill to give me a shot at writing the screenplay as well as directing. Coming from the 100-monkeys-at-100-typewriters-for-100-years-to-wr ite-a-Shakespeare-sonnet school of writing, my adaptation took a while to get working.

It takes 22 months from conception to birth to produce a new baby elephant. The gestation for the Alpine black salamander can be three years. Coraline beats them both with a total of eight and a half years--two years to write the screenplay, three years to find a studio and a distributor bold enough to make a spooky film for kids, and three and a half years to actually make the movie from green-light to release. As Neil likes to say, it took just long enough to get things right on Coraline. An explanation:

• If Coraline had been green-lit right away, it would have been a live-action film. Our producer was stuck in a deal where he wasn’t allowed to make animated films.

• If Coraline had been green-lit right away, I wouldn’t have had time to develop my filmic vision. When I decided to make Coraline’s hair blue, I’d lived with the project long enough to know it was the right color.

• If Coraline had been green-lit earlier as an animated film, it would have been made in CG, since CG animated features had totally dominated ever since Toy Story.

• If Coraline had been green-lit earlier as a stop-motion animated feature, we couldn’t have shot it in 3D since the newest digital projection systems had not yet been put into any movie theaters.

• If Coraline had been green-lit earlier, I wouldn’t have worked on Wes Anderson’s Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou where both my lead creature maker and I were exposed to one of the first 3D printers.  We used a later version of this device from a company called Objet, to expand the range of facial expressions in Coraline miles beyond Nightmare, and James, and Corpse Bride.

• Finally, if Coraline had been green-lit earlier, we wouldn’t have been able to work with LAIKA because that animation studio did not yet exist. Any other studio would have forced the film to be horribly sanitized and compromised. And without LAIKA, we wouldn’t have hooked up with our distributors, Focus Features/Universal.

Why I Love Stop-Motion
There was a debate about whether or not Coraline should be CG versus stop-motion early on at LAIKA.  We even did a side-by-side test, thinking of using CG for the real world, and stop-motion for the fantasy world. The test only proved that we should choose one technique for the whole film and, with the help of Travis Knight, one of our lead animators on Coraline (and now head honcho at LAIKA), we opted for stop-motion. Phewwwww! 

The animation in Coraline is so smooth at times that some people think it might be CG. But it’s not; it’s all real puppets bathed in real light standing on real, miniature sets; puppets that were manipulated a frame at a time by the best stop-mo animators in the world. Both hand drawn and CG animation involves the creation of key poses for an entire scene and having an assistant animator or computer create in-between images. There is the ability to change sections and re-time the shot and make all sorts of adjustments.  But in stop-motion, the final animation is an actual performance by the animator through the puppet, coaxing it to life a frame at a time. There is a voice actor to guide mouth shapes and timing, there are story sketches and pose tests and even rough rehearsals, but when a final shot is launched, it’s just one animator and their puppet crossing a tight rope across a chasm.

Mistakes are made and fixes must be improvised as the performance unfolds, and you can sense the kinetic energy of the animator’s hands touching and reshaping the puppet in every frame. It’s slow and hard to do but there is still an amazing kick in the pants when you play your shot back and see the miracle of something willed to life by your own hands. It’s like the dream of all children, that their most beloved toys come to life and speak to them and share their secrets. 

An Army of Experts
So what did it take to bring our main character in Coraline to life?

• We started with the Coraline in Neil’s novel, a character and tale inspired by his two daughters.
• In writing the script, I brought my own influences into the mix, including my big sister, Linda, who, when we were kids, led a mission to find a hidden well by an abandoned mansion. She also fell down a dry well in the snow once (Mr. Leg, our next door neighbor, pulled her out). My niece, Stephanie, was an inspiration for how young girls talk and think and move. 
• Dakota Fanning read an early script of mine when she was nine. She began to influence how I thought of Coraline. Later, when we recorded her for the voice, her performance had a huge effect on the timing and expressions of the character as Coraline was animated. 
• I worked with three different character design artists, two sculptors, and a battalion of puppet fabrication and facial animation experts to build the Coraline puppet. Next, our supervising animator and leads helped define her poses and walk and gestures, then they and all our fantastic character animators brought her to life a frame at a time in scenes sketched out by our story department, in worlds designed and built by our art/set department, bathed in real light and photographed by our lighting and camera dept, edited in our editing dept and cleaned up in visual effects.

Inspiration, Coincidence, Advice, Secrets

• The idea for the Other Mother’s spooky doll that resembles the kids it’s spying on came from something I saw in the obituaries. An old lady had died who’d been a child-star in the days of silent movies. There was an old publicity photo of her holding a doll that looked and was dressed exactly like her.

• One of my favorite films of all time is Terry Gilliam’s The Adventures of Baron Munchausen. The scene in Coraline where old Spink and Forcible perform "Sirens of the Sea" is an homage to the scene in Munchausen where a stunning, young Uma Thurman reenacts Botticelli’s “Birth of Venus” painting. I read that Terry told Ms. Thurman to look directly into the lens in the scene to unsettle the audience.

• We had normal pets when I was a kid, like our boxer dogs Mugs and Eric, and we had unusual pets, like seahorses, raccoons, a chipmunk, and a baby alligator. Twice in my life, maybe three times, I’ve gotten big red dragonflies to land on my fingertip. I once stunned a big blue one with my fishing rod when I was a kid and brought the still-living creature home to study. I looked it up in my bug book to find I’d accidentally knocked its head off. Coraline wears a dragonfly barrette and makes origami dragonflies that come to life in the Other World.

• Another bug that fascinates me is the praying mantis. Rudy Kugler gave me an egg case in 4th grade that hatched out a hundred little mantises I put on my mom’s rose bushes. Near where I used to live in California, there’s a big metal sculpture of a praying mantis (eight feet long) on the roof of a gardening store. I thought it could make a great tractor design and so I put one in “Coraline” for the Other Father to drive. Twice, I’ve found mantises outside the studio, one on my car and another, especially fierce one, by the smoker’s area door. Guess all that cigarette smoke made him angry.

• We were well into production and I was looking for a visual ticking clock for when Coraline plays the game to find the ghost children and her parents. A gorgeous lunar eclipse occurred one night, and we all went outside the studio to watch it and bingo--there was the answer. The button-moon eclipse turned out to be one of the most memorable images in the film.

• When I first read Neil’s novel, I really liked the idea of button eyes but wasn’t sure how they’d work visually. So, I got our son George, 3 at the time (five years later, I recorded his voice for the ghost boy), to lie still on his back, close his eyes, and let me place some black buttons on them. He looked wonderfully creepy. 

• After my mother, Melanie, read the Coraline novel, she reminded me that I used to sit in the kitchen for hours when I was 4 or 5 telling her about my other family in Africa, with other parents, where we had adventures with dangerous wildlife. She says I was very convincing.

• I was living in California when I wrote the first drafts of the screenplay for Coraline. With Neil’s encouragement, I was making some changes to the book, including setting the story in the U.S. I really wanted to keep the downstairs neighbors--actresses Miss Spink and Miss Forcible--British, so I picked Ashland, Oregon because they have a Shakespeare festival there. Two years later, I was approached by LAIKA Portland to come up and work for them. I agreed, and brought Coraline with me, eventually making the feature for LAIKA in Oregon. Ever since, I’ve felt that whatever state or country I had set Coraline in is where I would have ended up making it. Glad there’s no Shakespeare Festival in the Gobi Desert.

• I was always pitching my screen story for Coraline to my family over the years, and showing character designs and artwork to them for feedback. I also had a few film business friends read my script for input: Liz Bird told me I’d made Coraline’s real parents much too likeable and there was no reason for her to run away; director David Fincher suggested I arm Coraline with a chain saw to fight the Other Mother (but I resisted the temptation).

• I’ve always thought of Neil Gaiman as the cat in Coraline. He’s very wise, dryly humorous, and superior in a cat-like way. He has a great voice and I considered early on having him voice the cat. In re-setting the story in the U.S., I felt I needed more ethnic range in the characters leading me to the marvelous Keith David. Sorry, Neil.

• The two movers at the beginning of the film are based on real brothers Joe and Jerome Ranft, big guys who used to get asked so often to help people move on weekends that they had T-shirts printed up with “Ranft Brothers Movers” on them. Joe was one of the greatest story artists of all time and was head of story on Nightmare Before Christmas and Toy Story and many other features. He was a huge, sweet brilliant storyteller and artist with a demented side that was hilarious. He died in a car accident a few years back. Jerome, his younger brother, is one of the greatest sculptors working in animation today with a decidedly cruder sense of humor than Joe. I love both of these guys a lot.

And Now, for the Close
Well I’m all blogged out for now.  Hope you enjoy the Coraline DVDs and all the extras we’ve crammed onto the 2-disc Blu-Ray Hi-Def and 2-disc Collector’s Edition DVD. There’s even a 3D version of the film included so you can have a stereoscopic experience right there in the privacy of your own home.  Over…and…OUT. 

Learn more about the making of Coraline:

July's Horror Spotlight DVD is Tenebre, from master horror director Dario Argento.  David from Bloody-Disgusting.com has written a blog to share the story behind Tenebre, and why this Argento masterpiece is worthy of this month's horror pick. And check it out for yourself - the Tenebre DVD is 47% off during the month of July. -Lisanne

While in Los Angeles to pitch a horror story to MGM in 1980, Dario Argento began receiving phone calls from a stranger who wanted to discuss Suspiria after it left a huge impression on him. After talking to this “fan” for a few days, the phone calls had become more and more intense until eventually Argento was receiving death threats. Even after the police determined the calls to be nothing more than a sick joke, the stranger continued to harass Argento, claiming to know the police were getting close and swore that he would kill the maestro. Out of this experience, Tenebre – Argento’s return to the giallo after working in the supernatural realm of the Three Mothers for the past five years – was born. Much like Argento’s deranged admirer, the madness that runs rampant in Tenebre is inspired by a work of fiction.

Tenebrae, the title of Peter Neal’s (Anthony Franciosa) book in the film, is a Catholic service – which consists of lighting 15 candles and extinguishing one after each preselected psalm is read aloud, followed by a loud noise of sorts and the revealing of a final remaining flame that signifies Christ’s resurrection after the earthquake – that is held the night before or morning of Maundy Thursday, Good Friday and Holy Saturday; the three final days of Holy Week. While some direct religious implications are made in the film (most notably the conversation between Neal and television interviewer Christiano Berti (John Steiner), it’s Tenebrae’s Latin definition – shadows or darkness – that more directly explains a great deal about the film’s inner workings.

In Tenebre’s case, the darkness or shadow is the evil that is enveloping the world; the darkness that overtakes the soul and makes us do immoral things. Stealing and infidelity are among the sins committed by the victims prior to their demise, which solidifies the flashback sequences intercut throughout the film, highlighting a sexual humiliation of sorts and a murder, as the killer’s true motivation. Truly, this is why you shouldn’t pick on people. This line of thinking also brings up an interesting contrast to the darkness of the human condition: the film, of which most others in its genre take place at night, plays out almost entirely during broad daylight.

Much of the trickery and setup in Tenebre plays out in a dream-like state; not in a Suspiria sort of way but more like a literal blurring between fact and convincing fiction. Rome, where the story takes place, is not based in modern day but rather an alternate Rome of the future which, according to a Cinefantastique interview with Argento conducted by Alan Jones, is “inhabited by fewer people with the results that the remainder are wealthier and less crowded. Something has happened to make it that way but no one remembers or wants to remember.” Indeed, the Rome in Tenebre has no historical past, with landmarks like the Colosseum, churches or even buildings with any Roman architecture conspicuously absent. The flashbacks, which potentially tell the story of the killer’s past, are presented with a foggy perspective. A speech Detective Giermani gives towards the end, meant to put all the pieces of the puzzle together, is worded so that there is a very slim possibility the flashbacks aren’t something from the killer’s childhood but even so, it represents something that was maddening, whether it be an actual occurrence, a nightmare or something from a book or film.

Even with the bait and switch that occurs halfway through the film (the most interesting part of a narrative that is probably Argento’s most complex, considering the simplistic nature of most of his plots), the strangest and most fascinating trick played on viewers deals with the young woman (Eva Robbins) in the flashbacks. She represents a desire, one that doesn’t come without a price, and her red high-heels are out of place on a beach, which makes the imagery that much more fantastical. Since this is a giallo, appearances can be quite deceiving and, in the young woman’s case, this has never rung more true; Robbins grew up a man but developed female sexual characteristics due to a disorder.

Although one could be tempted to label Tenebre as Argento’s attempt at a slasher film, it actually resembles noir more closely than anything, which the giallo strongly resembles in many aspects. The film stands as the most meticulously constructed Argento efforts; one that not only challenges the viewer with its many themes and intricacies but also retains the same look and feel as the maestro’s more famous and widely celebrated films. Not only that, it also features one of the best gore sequences ever put to celluloid which served as an inspiration for Sofie Fatale’s arm amputation in Tarantino’s Kill Bill: Vol. 1. - David Harley, Bloody-Disgusting.com